1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an exercise apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an exercise apparatus with handles.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nowadays various exercise apparatuses such as treadmills, indoor cycles, ellipticals, stair exerciser apparatuses, steppers, rower machines, weight training apparatuses, and almost all exercise apparatuses have handlebars for allowing a user to grip during exercise. The handlebars according to their type and main function can be summarized into four categories: First, fixed handlebars for people to hold to stabilize the body to avoid falling, such as the treadmill, the handlebars at front end or two sides of the stair exerciser apparatus; Second, fixed handlebars for people to grip to stabilize the upper body for supporting the movement of the lower body, such as the handlebar at front end of the upright bike, the handlebars at two side of the seat of the recumbent bike, or the handlebars of other leg exercise weight training machine; Third, movable handlebars for allowing people to choose to grip during exercise for additional movement, such as most ellipticals have movable handlebars that could be swingable forward and backward; fourth, movable handlebars for people to grip during exercise, such as the handlebar of the rower machine, the movable handlebars of other weight training machines by movement of hands. Some exercise apparatuses may have two or more handle sets, for example, the recumbent bike generally has two fixed handle sets (disposed at a front of the bike and two sides of the seat), and the elliptical may have one fixed handle set and one movable handle set.
In the conventional technique, in addition to provide above main functions as the user holds the handlebar of the exercise apparatus, some may install heart rate sensors on the grip portions of the handlebar and/or control buttons corresponding to the location of thumbs for detecting the heart rate of the user and allowing the user to input a command. In addition, the handlebar of the conventional exercise apparatus rarely has other functions.
In other hand, although the aforementioned exercise apparatuses are known for indoor use so that the user is not exposed outdoor environment, the body temperature may be higher than usual 1-2 degrees C. or more according to the intensity and the duration during exercise. Therefore, even used indoor, the exercise apparatus user may be in a high body temperature or overheating state after exercising for a period of time. If the body keeps heating without well heat radiating, especially in the high indoor temperature, high humidity, worse ventilation or improper dress, it may cause the user to feel uncomfortable during exercise or after exercise, or heat injury such as febrile convulsion or heat exhaustion. Some exercise apparatuses have a small fan blowing toward the user on the console for assisting the user to cool down the skin so as to avoid the user's body temperature continuing to rise.
In another hand, before the relatively intense formal exercise, it is best to perform warm-up exercise first to let the body gradually into a state suitable for high-intensity exercise, including moderately increasing body temperature, accelerating heart rate and blood circulation, increasing oxygen content of the muscle tissue, etc. so as to enhance athletic performance and avoid sport injuries. Relatively, after the formal exercise, it is best to perform cool-down exercise to let the body gradually back to normal state so as to avoid accumulation of metabolites in the muscle tissue to cause pain and even injury. In general, when a user performs a specific exercise by a specific exercise apparatus, the user usually performs a low-intensity exercise directly on the exercise apparatus for a period of time or gradually increases the exercise intensity as the warm-up exercise; and performs a low-intensity exercise on the exercise apparatus for a period of time or gradually decreases the exercise intensity as the cool-down exercise. The user could follow an exercise program with a warm-up period and a cool-down period to do exercise, or manually adjust the exercise intensity (such as adjusting the speed of the treadmill belt), or control the exercise speed by himself (such as slow down the pedaling speed on the bike), so that the user could perform the warm-up exercise and the cool-down exercise respectively in the period of time after the beginning of exercise and in the period of time before the end of exercise. However, if the overall exercise time is not long enough, the occupied time for warm-up exercise and cool-down exercise is also shortened to cause lack of the warm-up and cool-down effects. For example, since the time for warm-up exercise is too short, the user's body temperature is not warm enough to perform the high-intensity exercise, which may hurt muscles, muscle tendons or joints easily. Further, since the time for cool-down exercise is too short, the user's muscle and heart may be still in a state of excitement and high body temperature as the exercise is finished. Also, for physical factors, some people may be hard to rise the body temperature in the warm-up stage, or hard to reduce the body temperature in the cool-down stage.
Furthermore, in the formal exercise stage, the user is best to keep the exercise intensity within a suitable range in accord with the user's age and physical ability to obtain the best exercise effect and avoid danger due to excessive exercise. Some exercise apparatuses are able to detect the user's heart rate during exercise and display that on console as reference or index for the exercise intensity, namely, when the heart rate is lower than an ideal heart rate range (generally depends on ages), it represents that the exercise intensity is too low at that time to achieve the predetermined movement effect, so that the user should enhance the exercise intensity. In contrast, when the heart rate is higher than the ideal heart range, it represents that the exercise intensity is too high at that time to make the heart overburden, so that the user should decrease the exercise intensity. Some exercise apparatuses may measure the metabolic equivalent (MET) of users and display that on console as reference or index for the exercise intensity. In the conventional technique, in a specific operation mode of some exercise apparatuses, it will automatically increase/decrease the difficulty of the motion mechanism as detecting that the user's heart rate or metabolic equivalent is too low/high, such as automatically increasing/decreasing the speed of the treadmill belt, increasing/decreasing the pedaling resistance of the bike so as to increase/decrease the exercise intensity of the user for guiding the user to perform the exercise with a suitable exercise intensity.